WaitingForNextYear

Every Tuesday, WFNY’s The 5-Hole brings you up to date with the goings-on of the CBJ…

The Week That Was

Week: 1-1-1, 3 points
Overall: 7-5-1, 15 points (2nd division; t8th conference)

I think I’ve figured out what one of this team’s problems is: they’ve bought into their own hype. When they get ahead, they think they’re much better than they are and they coast. They lollygag the puck around and think they can just play the clock out. I hope Sunday’s game–a huge win–showed them something: without the best player on the planet, the Capitals made them look silly for long periods of time. But, they rallied and finished strong. Newsflash, though, Jackets: you’re not that great, yet. Yet.

Wednesday, 10/28 in Columbus – Coyotes 4, Jackets 1 (Box Score) – Highlights
Friday, 10/30 in Columbus – Penguins 4, Jackets 3 – SO (Box Score) – Highlights
Sunday, 11/1 in Washington – Jackets 5, Capitals 4 – OT (Box Score) – Highlights

In fairness to the Jackets, they improved each game this week. That said, they led in each of the three games, and only came away with one win. They led 1-0 against Phoenix, and then imploded. They led Pittsburgh 2-0 and 3-1, and gave up two goals in about 40 seconds to go to overtime, eventually losing in the shoot-out. They led 2-1 against Washington, only to fall behind 3-2. They tied it at 3, and then fell behind 4-3. It took a flurry of activity with an extra skater and a bevy of shots to tie it at 4 with 22 seconds left to force overtime. A fortuitous penalty in overtime gave the Jackets a 4-on-3 Power Play, and they wasted no time in burying the winner.

So, while three points isn’t horrible, and 15 points in 13 games also isn’t horrible, the Jackets did not put their best collective foot forward. In truth, the silver lining is that there was improvement. They looked flat-out horrible against Phoenix. They looked totally solid for about 55 minutes against Pittsburgh, but couldn’t finish. They were streaky against Washington, but most importantly they finished strong. And, they got some good news on the injury front, so perhaps a corner has been turned overall. They’ve weathered a tough schedule storm without their best defenseman, so here’s hoping things can improve moving forward.

 

Up Next

The Jackets have a couple of off days before three more games this week, with two of them being at home. They host San Jose (10-4-1, 21pts) on Wednesday. They then get a bit of a break as they face two of the lower-level Eastern Conference teams, heading to Atlanta (5-4-1, 11pts) on Thursday and then hosting lowly Carolina (2-8-3, 7pts) on Saturday. The Carolina game is the first of four straight home games, and the Jackets have three off days after the Hurricanes come to town to rest and practice up.

Full Schedule

       

Who’s Hot, Who’s Not

Hot: That’s Why He’s The Captain. Rick Nash has been fairly quietly off to one of his best starts since being drafted by Columbus. His line has been juggled extensively and he’s been playing with an ever-changing cast of characters. He plays on the Power Play. He kills penalties. And, all he’s done thus far is throw up a line of: 9G, 11A, 20Pts in 13 games, which is fourth in the league (and only three points behind leader Alex Ovechkin). He doesn’t get the national attention of guys like Sydney Crosby, Evgeni  Malkin, and Ovechkin, but Rick Nash truly has become a COMPLETE player. He’s a power forward that can score, set up his teammates, and play defense. There’s not much he can’t do well.

Not: Steve Mason. My wife will probably kick my rear end when she reads this (she loves her some Steve Mason), but I have to call it like I see it. He’s not getting a ton of help, but with the holes on defense Mason has the opportunity to carry this team a bit, and he has without a doubt taken a small step back these past couple of weeks. Mason has appeared not to have the same mental focus he had for much of last year. He’s given up some bad goals, but worse than that he seems to be carrying them with him a lot more than he did last year. His calmness was contagious last year, and he never seemed to get rattled. This year, not so much. Mason is 6-4-1 in 11 starts with a 3.53 goals-against average and a meager .882 save percentage. Compare that to last season when his GAA was 2.29 and his SV% was .916. Not good times, Mase.

The news is not all bad, as the past two games have shown some improvement: “Mason stopped 61 of 68 shots (.897 save percentage) against the Penguins and Capitals, but he looked bigger in the net and appeared more confident, like he was reacting to pucks rather than guessing. In his previous four outings, Mason stopped only 86 of 106 shots (.811).”

 

Injury Update

The team has still been without Jan Hejda, though it sounds as though he may be back sooner rather than later. In his write-up of the Capitals game, Tom Reed wrote that Hejda is expected back for Wednesday’s game. This morning in their blog, Aaron Portzline reports that Hejda has been cleared to play tomorrow night by doctors. It would be expected that his conditioning would be a little under par for now, but having Hejda back would be huge. There’s no overstating it.

Also from Reed from Sunday’s game: “Fedor Tyutin and Derick Brassard suffered hand/wrist injuries. Defenseman Mike Commodore played through a charley horse he suffered in Friday night’s game. Ken Hitchcock believes those three injuries were not serious. Hitchcock did, however, elude to several other possible injuries. He was awaiting word from the medical staff before discussing them. Tyutin was hit in the right hand with a puck. Brassard took a nasty slash late in the third period, but returned to the game to set up the tying goal.” We found out this morning, however, that x-rays on both were negative. Very good news.

Forward Andrew Murray is still out with a bum shoulder. Winger Nikita Filatov has a bruised back and is doubtful for Wednesday’s game with San Jose—though it is questionable as to whether he would have played anyway. Hitch has a habit of keeping Filatov out of the “bigger” games.

Finally, also according to Reed: “Fredrick Modin’s knee injury is not healing as quickly as the Jackets had hoped. It was injured in a Sept. 16 exhibition game. General manager Scott Howson said Modin recently took a week off from skating.”

 

Big Time Sucking Excuse (?) Quote of the Week

It’s not that we aren’t (closing out games), we can’t. With the way we are roster-wise we can’t. Until we get the big guy [Hejda] back there and it starts to spread the minutes … It’s the fourth game in a row when we ran out of gas back there.
–Coach Ken Hitchcock

Huh. Hitch is generally not a guy to make excuses, but that sure sounds like one. On the other hand…

 

Rallying Point (?) Quote of the Week

Tonight, you saw the fight in our team that was there last year. In the past week, you saw some quit in our team. We would give up a couple goals and the bench would drop. Tonight, we stayed very positive on the bench. Nobody was saying, “Why us?” we just kept coming.
–Forward RJ Umberger after Sunday’s overtime win against Washington

This is the quote that basically sums everything up. The Jackets have looked deflated at times, having blown leads in several of their recent games. I stated in the lead that I felt like the Jackets perhaps felt a little too big for their britches. This quote might paint things in a different light, as RJ used the word “quit”—never a word you like to hear from your favorites teams’ players. Let’s hope he’s right; Hejda is supposed to be back this week, and if a bit of a wake-up call has been received it can only help. Right? Right??